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The New York Times
Poll Finds a Fluid
Religious Life in U.S.
By NEELA BANERJEE,
nytimes.com on the Web, February
WASHINGTON — More than a
quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join
another religion or no religion, according to a survey of religious affiliation
by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and
diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations
are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched
religious affiliations.
For at least a generation, scholars have noted that more Americans are moving
among faiths, as denominational loyalty erodes. But the survey, based on
telephone interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, offers one of the clearest
views yet of that trend, scholars said. The United States Census does not
track religious affiliation.
It shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but
that the Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a
result of affiliation changes.” The survey also indicates that the group
that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. Sixteen percent of
American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the
unaffiliated the country’s fourth-largest “religious group.”
Detailing the nature of religious affiliation — who has the numbers, the
education, the money — signals who could hold sway over the country’s political
and cultural life, said John Green, an author of the report and a senior fellow
on religion and American politics at Pew.
Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban
Life at Rice University, echoed that view. “Religion is the single most
important factor that drives American belief attitudes and behaviors,” said Mr.
Lindsay, who had read the Pew report. “It is a powerful indicator of where
America will end up on politics, culture, family life. If you want to
understand America, you have to understand religion in America.”
In the 1980s, the General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center
indicated that 5 percent to 8 percent of the population described itself as
unaffiliated with a particular religion.
The Pew survey, available on the Web at
http://religions.pewforum.org/, was conducted between May and August of
2007. The margin of sampling error ranges from plus or minus one
percentage point for the total sample to two points for Catholics and eight
points for Hindus.
In the Pew survey 7 percent of the adult population said they were unaffiliated
with a faith as children. That segment increases to 16 percent of the
population in adulthood, the survey found. The unaffiliated are largely
under 50 and male. “Nearly one in five men say they have no formal
religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13 percent of women,” the survey
said.
The rise of the unaffiliated does not, however, mean that Americans are becoming
less religious. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are
atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.”
Pew researchers said later projects would delve more deeply into their beliefs
and practices and would try to determine if the unaffiliated remained so as they
aged.
The other groups that have gained the most people, in net terms, are
nondenominational Protestant churches, which are largely evangelical and, in
many cases, megachurches; Pentecostals; and the Holiness Church, also an
evangelical denomination.
While the ranks of the unaffiliated have been growing, Protestantism has been
declining, the survey found. In the 1970s, Protestants accounted for some
two-thirds of the population. The Pew survey found they now make up about
50 percent. Evangelical Christians account for a slim majority of
Protestants, and those who leave one evangelical denomination usually move to
another, rather than to mainline churches.
Prof. Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston
University, said large numbers of Americans leaving organized religion and large
numbers still embracing the fervor of evangelical Christianity pointed to the
same desires.
“The trend is towards more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that,”
Professor Prothero said, explaining that evangelical churches tailored much of
their activities to youths.
“Those losing out are offering impersonal religion,” he said, “and those winning
are offering a smaller scale: mega-churches succeed not because they are
mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.”
The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for
decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in
native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of
Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.
The Roman Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group:
about one-third of respondents raised Catholic said they no longer identified as
such. Based on the data, the survey showed, “this means that roughly 10
percent of all Americans are former Catholics.”
Immigration continues to influence American religion greatly, the survey found.
The majority of immigrants are Christian, and almost half are Catholic.
Muslims rival Mormons as having the largest families. And Hindus are the
best-educated and among the richest religious groups, the survey found.
“I think politicians will be looking at this survey to see what groups they
ought to target,” Professor Prothero said. “If the Hindu population is
negligible, they won’t have to worry about it. But if it is wealthy, then
they may have to pay attention.”
Experts said the wide-ranging variety of religious affiliation could set the
stage for further conflicts over morality or politics, or new alliances on
certain issues, as religious people have done on climate change or Jews and
Hindus have done over relations between the United States, Israel and India.
“It sets up the potential for big arguments,” said Mr. Green of Pew, “but also
for the possibility of all sorts of creative synthesis. Diversity cuts
both ways.”
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